Volkswagen has really gotten into a pickle. The German auto company that had positioned itself as the number one manufacturer of clean diesel cars went for quantity over quality, said Art Wheaton, senior lecturer at Cornell University and an auto industry expert.

"This has been an accident waiting to happen," he told Discovery News.

For years, Volkswagen strived to produce and sell more motor vehicles than any other manufacturer in the world. To that end, they bought up smaller car companies, 12 in all, including Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Porsche.

One reason might have been that making a car is not cheap. The research and development alone can cost upwards of a billion dollars for just one new model. And once it's out there, it has to appeal to buyers and compete with other cars, like those coming from Toyota.

Unlike Toyota, Volkswagen didn't have a gas-electric hybrid or anything else in the "high fuel economy" category. But then it began developing clean diesel.

This appealed to European drivers. In Europe, the cost of diesel is cheaper than in the United States, where the fuel is taxed at a higher rate and is intentionally more expensive to discourage sales, said Wheaton.

Diesel produces more energy per gallon than unleaded gasoline and the engines are more efficient. A diesel car can go 30 percent farther than your typical car running on unleaded gasoline.

Enter clean diesel. The technology is a combination of fuel with less sulfur, more efficient engines and emission-control technology, some of which add weight to the car, as well as higher maintenance costs. What's more, lowering the pollution levels can reduce a car's performance.

It seems that to get around these problems, Volkswagen engineers wrote some computer code that turned a car's pollution controls on when the car was in test mode and then turned them off when the car was in road-driving mode.

"Any time you have testing you have gaming of the system," Wheaton said.

You only need to look to sports, where blood doping and steroids have created their own scandals.

And although they might have been able to fool the EPA, Wheaton said, Volkswagen wasn't able to get around the California Air Resources Board, an organization that reports directly to the governor and is concerned with air quality. California has some of the strictest emission laws in the country.

The rest of the story is all over the news and Volkswagen now faces billions of dollars in fines - costs that it may have never incurred had it put quality over quantity.

The Frankfurt Motor Show opens in Germany on September 15, and several cars caught our eye. Have a look for yourself.
Starting in 2019, electric cars in Europe will be required to emit a noise so that pedestrians will hear them coming. Peugeot used this regulation as inspiration for their concept car, the Fractal, which they describe as an "electric urban coupé" that will use sound to enhance the driving experience.
Working with sound designer and producer Amon Tobin, Peugeot developed a car that has a unique exterior as well as interior sound -- opening and closing a door as well as acceleration and deceleration will all trigger different noises. In the future, drivers may be able to personalize a car's audio signature the way people now personalize ring tones.

Last week, Bugatti unveiled renderings for their Vision car, a virtual racer for the Gran Turismo racing video game. A full size model will show up in Frankfurt, but what has everyone murmuring is whether or not these designs hint at the Italian car company's newest car, the Chiron, the successor to their Veyron, of which the last and 450th model of was finally built.

German car brand Borgward went bankrupt in 1961. But Christian Borgward -- grandson of Carl F. W. Borgward -- and Chinese industrial giant Foton have resurrected the company and will unveil their new SUV at Frankfurt.

Mitsubishi will debut its European plug-in hybrid, the Outlander PHEV. A version of this car is actually taking part in the Baja Portalegre 500 in Portugal in October. The U.S. might see this stylish hybrid SUV in 2016.

Nissan is being pretty tight-lipped about its new Gripz, saying only that it was "conceived to create an innovative new driving sensation.” By the looks of it, the car was inspired by the red and black Safari Rally Zs of the 1970s.

Audi released sketches of their concept SUV in August and said the electric vehicle will have a range of about 311 miles, thanks in part to an energy efficient battery and three electric motors -- two to power the rear axle and one for the front.

This concept vehicle isn't showing up at the Frankfurt Auto Show, but we simply couldn't resist. It's an autonomous electric hearse called the Korbiyor and it was designed by Charles Bombardier. The vehicle is essentially a platform with a transparent, refrigerated coffin. And because it rolls on Mecanum wheels, each one made of individual turning components, it can move in any direction.